


Taking Detours

by notthetoothfairy



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 05:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13474701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthetoothfairy/pseuds/notthetoothfairy
Summary: Kurt doesn't plan on breaking into his dreamy neighbor's apartment but he's on a bit of a detour.





	Taking Detours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_simple_rainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_simple_rainbow/gifts).



> It’s a certain someone’s birthday!!! And since that certain someone is my usual beta reader, please excuse possible typos and weird sentences.
> 
> [a_simple_rainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_simple_rainbow/pseuds/a_simple_rainbow) \- I have a weird feeling you once kind of prompted me to write Kurt breaking into Blaine’s apartment or vice versa? But even if you didn’t, that’s what I wrote, sort of, so just roll with it! :D Happy birthday, love! ♥
> 
> Also, [Klaineship](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klaineship/pseuds/Klaineship) kindly, amazingly offered to translate my story into German (["Auf Umwegen"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13784841)) and it's absolutely fantastic, so if you'd rather read this in German (or want to read it _again but this time in German, there you go. ;)_

“You  _what_?!” Kurt asks Rachel again, exasperated. “After I  _just_  lost my keys to Santana because it was my turn to lend her mine and she had to take a spontaneous trip to Ohio to make Brittany jealous or whatever she is doing this time? Ugh.”

Rachel is wringing her hands with a miserable grimace.

“I’m sorry, Kurt,” she repeats. “I… I really screwed up. I had them in my coat but the one I wore yesterday, not this one – and I didn’t even think that the other key is in Ohio.” Her eyes widen. “Oh god, do you think we’ll have to sleep on the streets?!”

Kurt eyes her in annoyance. “No, Rachel, we’re going to sleep in our apartment.” He sighs, looking the outside wall in front of them up and down. “We just need to find a way to get up that fire escape.”

He glances around, finds a trash can and decides that it’ll have to do. He makes his way over there and ignores Rachel as she impatiently tugs on his jacket.

“Have you lost your mind, Kurt?! Even if you get up there – which I doubt, by the way – how will you get into the apartment?”

Kurt positions the trash can just right so he is right below the ladder.

“I left my window open to get some fresh air,” he says, knowing perfectly well that it will drive Rachel crazy.

Sure enough she starts ranting about how she hates coming back to a freezing apartment, and that a quick gush of air for about ten minutes every morning is enough.

Kurt looks down from where he has climbed onto the trash can. He cocks an eyebrow at Rachel.

“Do you want to continue with your little tirade or will you at one point start being grateful that I am singlehandedly saving you the trouble of finding shelter tonight?” he asks.

Rachel frowns and huffs but she shuts up nonetheless.

“Now give me a little support, please?” Kurt requests, mentally preparing himself for what he’s about to do. “I don’t want to die because you were too careless with the keys.”

About five tries of jumping and missing, accompanied without fail by a horrified shriek from Rachel. The sixth time, though, Kurt manages to hold on to the ladder and pull himself up (all thanks to his new gym routine). This time, Rachel cheers and Kurt rolls his eyes at her one last time before climbing up all the way and continuing up the stairs.

He wishes he was wearing a bit less tight pants, though, because climbing flights after flights of stairs turns out to be quite exhausting. He’s already thrown his jacket down to where Rachel is watching him, but he’s not about to lose any more clothes. He must already look like a lunatic burglar.

Then again, it’s New York.

Kurt keeps counting floors as he makes his way up higher. Having the loft apartment, of course they are at the very top, but something doesn’t add up as Kurt reaches the end of the fire escape. A quick glance through the window in front of him tells him he’s made a mistake because he does not recognize the furniture.

“Goddammit,” he mutters to himself. “Wrong side of the house, really?  _Really_ , Kurt?!”

He looks down and, oh, wow, he’s high up. How has he not looked down before now? He grabs the handrail a bit tighter.

“Fuck, fuck fuck.” Kurt grits his teeth. “Okay, you have two options. Die up here or get back down there…” As he turns around, another window catches his eye. “Or…” He shouldn’t. But it’s opened just slightly and it would be so easy to just slide it up all the way and quickly get this all over with.

Well, that’s the pro. The con is that he might give someone a heart attack. What if it’s an elderly lady?

But maybe… maybe nobody will even see him. Maybe this person isn’t even home – maybe they’re just fresh air enthusiasts like Kurt.

And maybe Kurt is a coward who can’t go back down now that he’s climbed up so far and the adrenaline is all used up, and he’s realizing he is more afraid of heights than he thought.

“I’m insane, I’m  _so_  insane,” he tells himself as he slides the window up quietly and climbs into an apartment that is most definitely not his.

He wishes it were his a little bit because the first thing he spots next to a cozy-looking queen bed is an acoustic piano, a guitar and lots and lots of sheet music neatly stacked on an alphabetized shelf. Kurt’s halfway on his way to inspect the collection when he remembers his mission and turns back to the room’s door.

He opens the door with care, painfully aware that he is basically breaking and entering, even if for good reasons. He gulps and peers out the door. Another big room, connected to an open kitchen space. Alright, this must be the living room then. Kurt’s eyes flit around and find the main entrance quickly. That must be it, the door with the shoe rack and the keys on the cabinet…

As he moves toward it, a door to his left suddenly opens and a half-naked guy comes out, eyes so focused on tightening his towel that he misses Kurt.

“Sam?” the owner of the gorgeous apartment calls out. “Was that you? Did you forget something?”

Kurt cringes. He doesn’t want to get beaten up, and the guy looks like he could be up for the job judging by those arms and back, but he can’t also  _not_  say anything… what if he still gets caught and looks even more guilty than he already is?

“Uhm,” he says dumbly, for a lack of better words. “No, it’s-”

The guy yells and jumps at the sudden sound behind him, and – okay, wow, talk about a heart attack, because the towel falls as he turns around and  _that’s_  definitely something Kurt did not expect to see when he broke into the apartment.

For god’s sake, he thought it would be an elderly lady. But no, that’s  _so_  not the anatomy of an elderly lady.

Kurt chokes on his words, beet red, and slaps his hand over his eyes.

The guy scrambles to get his towel back up before hissing, “What the fuck?! Who the hell are you and why are you in my apartment?!”

Kurt peeks through his fingers and, okay, it’s semi-safe. He lowers his hand – but once he gets a closer look at the guys face, he suddenly wishes he would have just fallen off the stupid fire escape.

That’s none other than Blaine Anderson, the guy from 7B, who always causes a lot of elbowing from Rachel and crude jokes about his sex life from Santana whenever he passes and Kurt yet again fails to introduce himself.

Blaine seems to realize he’s seen Kurt around at the same time.

“Wait, you’re that guy – from the loft, right…?” he asks, looking more confused than ever.

“Yes, uh, hi,” Kurt manages to say, curses himself for all the awkwardness that he’s about to endure. “God, I am  _so_  sorry about this.”

Blaine shifts around uncomfortably, his dark eyebrows furrowed so deep that his whole face is scrunched up.

“I don’t understand. What are you doing in my apartment? How did you even get in?” His face falls all of a sudden. “Are you  _stalking_  me?!”

“What?! No!” Kurt exclaims, horrified at the thought. “Oh, no, no, no, I’m not here on purpose, especially not on  _that_  purpose, I swear. Please believe me. Please, Blaine, just let me explain.”

Blaine opens and closes his mouth a few times before settling on, “You know my name.”

Oh, shit.

“Uhhhh.” Kurt closes his eyes. “Okay, not making a good case for myself here.” He blinks one eye open to gauge Blaine’s reaction. “At least you seem to have decided I’m not dangerous.”

“Actually, I’m not entirely convinced,” Blaine says honestly, grabbing his phone from the table next to him. “But I know who you are, too, Kurt Hummel. So I can report you to the police if need be.”

“Wait, how do you know  _my_ -” Kurt starts but Blaine glares at him and he shuts up. “Right. Not the point. Explanation.” He bites his lip, takes a deep breath, and just goes for the truth. “Would you believe me if I told you that my crazy roommates have issues with taking good care of keys and left us locked out of the apartment so that I had to climb up a flight of stairs on the fire escape only to realize that I was on the wrong side of the building and discovered I’m actually a bit scared of heights so I decided to do the dumb thing and climb into a random stranger’s apartment hoping nobody would be there and my little stunt here would go unnoticed?”

He gets all of that out in record speed – come to think of it, he hasn’t breathed since steeling himself for that little speech, so maybe time to do that – and shoots Blaine a pleading look.

“Okay, wait a second, that was really fast,” Blaine says, shaking his head. “You’re locked out of your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“And instead of calling a locksmith you decided to climb up the fire escape?”

Kurt blinks. “… yes?”

“Okay…” Blaine acknowledges his stupidity with an amused chuckle. “And then you couldn’t get back down and you thought it would be better to potentially get caught as a burglar than just climb down?”

“I guess…” Kurt says with a frustrated sigh.

“And you do realize that you’re still ending up on the wrong side of your apartment door once you’ve made it through mine?”

Kurt purses his lips and wants to die in a hole somewhere.

“Uhm,” he says. “I hadn’t even gotten that far.”

They stare at each other in silence for another moment. Until Blaine just starts shaking with laughter.

“Okay, this is officially hilarious,” he gets out in between little hiccupping laughs that are absolutely adorable, though Kurt’s doing his best to ignore that. “Are you aware that I just dropped my towel in front of my neighbor and I still somehow managed to not have made the biggest fool of myself in this scenario?”

Kurt lets out an embarrassed squeak. “I’m sorry!”

“Thank you,” Blaine says, still laughing. “At least you’re a very polite burglar.”

“Not a burglar,” Kurt whines. “Just incredibly stupid.”

Blaine shrugs. “You did enter my house without permission.”

“God, please don’t call the police on me.”

“Not planning to.” Blaine smiles and puts his phone back on the table. “I don’t think anyone would have been able to make up a story like that on the spot. Besides, you look way too innocent and cute – they probably wouldn’t believe me if I tell them you broke in.” He gulps all of a sudden and fidgets with his towel. “Uhm, anyway, uh… would you mind if I… just stepped out to…?”

“Please,” Kurt says, voice wavering.

He’s been trying hard not to ogle Blaine even now that they’ve established Kurt’s not actually a serial killer or total creep. Though Kurt’s not so sure about the latter himself. He did see Blaine naked, after all, and he’s kind of failing the not-ogling thing.

He blames the little droplets of water still drying only slowly on Blaine’s chest.

And also,  _hello_ , Blaine just called him cute. Kurt blames that, too.

Blaine steps around him awkwardly and slips through the door behind Kurt. Ah, so the amazing music room is his. Figures. If Kurt can’t trust his judgment for appropriate courses of action anymore, at least he still has his impeccable taste in men.

Kurt groans silently as he hears the door behind him close. He really stepped in it with his little stunt. Not to mention he’s still locked out of his apartment, as Blaine pointed out so aptly.

But Kurt has no time to ponder this in detail as Blaine comes back out of his room in a matter of minutes, dressed in jeans and a simple polo shirt. He has to move around Kurt again, and Kurt mentally slaps himself – repeatedly.

“Jeez, why did I just keep standing here?” he wonders out loud. To Blaine, he says, “Again, I am so sorry. I… I’ve caused enough damage, I – I can just show myself out, I guess.”

“Right, right…” Blaine mutters, running a hand through his hair. “What about your dilemma, though?”

“Huh?” Kurt is really losing the ability to think with the way Blaine’s eyes are trained on him with just the right amount of care and concern, and oh… “Dilemma…? Oh!” He rolls his eyes at himself. “No keys. Right. Uh… well, I guess I’ll call the locksmith…”

“I can check for a few places in the area,” Blaine offers, grabbing his phone again.

“Thanks, Blaine,” Kurt mumbles. “Ugh, and Santana’s coming back tomorrow… if she were here today, she could just let us in. Now we’ll probably have to change locks and-”

“Or you could just stay here.”

“What?”

“I, uh- I mean. If you don’t- never mind, I-”

“Did you just offer me a place to stay after I more-or-less accidentally broke into your apartment, scared the hell out of you and came across as a  _total_  lunatic who just wanted to creep on you while you were naked?”

Blaine is the one to blush this time around.

“I mean, uhm.” He clears his throat. “You did cover your eyes when… that all happened. Also, I know for a fact that you actually live in this building, it’s not like I’ve never noticed- I mean, uh, seen you around… so.” He grimaces. “Do I really have to explain this? I’m just trying to be nice.”

“And you’re very much succeeding,” Kurt says breathlessly. “So… thank you.” He hesitates. “Well, I can’t really take you up on it, though. It feels a bit inappropriate. And I do have another roommate who’s also homeless for the night, though.”

“Not inappropriate at all, I offered.” Blaine shrugs. “And as for the roommate… my couch is big enough for two.”

“Wow.” Kurt blinks. “You really are  _very_  nice.”

Blaine lets out a mixture of a squeak and a laugh. Kurt wants to judge but doesn’t find it in himself to find it anything but absolutely endearing.

“Let me call Rachel and Santana and see what they say?” Kurt asks before clarifying, “My roommates, I mean.”

“Sure.” Blaine tilts his head. “Is the one potentially staying here the loud one or the scary one?”

Kurt laughs. “I’ll have you know they can both be very loud and scary, sometimes at the same time, which is usually my cue to leave for a few hours and curse myself to have moved in with two friends from high school.” He shakes his head fondly. “But I’m guessing you mean Santana when you say scary, so, no. The loud one would be staying here.”

“Alright, then.” Blaine smiles. “I’ll make some coffee while you call them. The least I can do is offer you something to drink while you figure out your options.”

“The  _least_  you can do?” Kurt asks under his breath as Blaine walks away. “Insanity…”

He calls Rachel, tells her as much as she needs to know, which is mainly that he did not die on the fire escape and is currently camping out in apartment 7B. That earns him a squeal so loud he has to hastily shove his phone closer to his ear to muffle the sound, to no avail, though, as Blaine looks over and chuckles.

“Yeah, definitely the loud one,” he comments.

Santana’s even less discrete, which is unsurprising but also more than embarrassing. She just cackles diabolically and tells Kurt she’ll stay away as long as he needs to play the damsel-in-distress card to get into dreamy neighbors pants, and Kurt prays to every deity he can think of that Blaine didn’t hear  _that_.

It doesn’t look like it, but Kurt has yet to respond.

“No, Santana, we’d very much appreciate it if you could come back tomorrow and solve this whole mess,” he says, voice tight, glancing at Blaine apologetically. “We don’t want to inconvenience Blaine longer than necessary.”

“Well I can think of a few ways you could repay him, you know? There’s-”

“See you tomorrow, Santana!” Kurt hangs up as quickly as he can.

A few minutes later, Blaine welcomes his second surprise guest into his apartment. Rachel made a quick beeline to the nearest grocery store and brought something to cook for dinner, so that Blaine wouldn’t have to spend extra money on them.

She talks fast as she thanks Blaine for his hospitality, asks endless questions about how Kurt ended up in the apartment, and just gapes at them like a fish when she finally gets them to tell her the full story.

Blaine’s roommate Sam comes home in time for dinner and only raises an eyebrow at Blaine.

“I see you invited the loft people,” he says with a smirk that Kurt can’t really place but sends Blaine into a bit of a coughing fit. “It’s nice to meet you,” Sam adds in Rachel and Kurt’s direction.

Despite not having anything with them and having to borrow everything from Sam and Blaine – except for tooth brushes, which Rachel thankfully thought of on her way to the store – they end up having a wonderful evening with delicious food, wine and an episode of America’s Next Topmodel.

Kurt and Blaine sit close enough to touch, and Kurt doesn’t think he imagines it when Blaine scoots a bit closer, pretending to make more room for Sam, and oh-so-subtly brushes the back of Kurt’s hand with his own.

He definitely doesn’t imagine the way Blaine’s breath hitches when Kurt gathers all his courage to lean close and whisper in his ear, “Somehow I was under the impression there’d be some nude photo shoots today.”

Blaine lets out a surprised laugh, giving Kurt a look that’s both scandalized and appreciative. Or so Kurt likes to think.

He almost thanks Rachel for being so forgetful about her keys. But only almost.

Once they are tucked into their makeshift beds and Sam and Blaine have retreated to their rooms, Rachel turns to Kurt, her head propped up on her hand.

“So, you saw him naked, huh?”

“Rachel!” Kurt buries his head under the blanket, and tries to think about how that a) actually happened, and b) somehow led to him lying on Blaine’s couch in Blaine’s apartment wearing Blaine’s clothes. “Please don’t.”

“I mean, most people start by formally introducing themselves but your way certainly has its perks.”

“Rachel, I swear,” Kurt hisses.

“Come on, I want to hear some details,” Rachel begs.

Kurt groans and peeks out under his blanket to take a look at Sam and Blaine’s doors. Closed shut. Good.

“Alright, alright, but for the love of god, shush.”

And amazingly, just for once, Rachel lets him talk and gush and rant, and keeps somewhat quiet throughout.

It’s not until the next morning that Kurt realizes Rachel never agreed to actually keep her mouth shut for the whole duration of their stay, so he doesn’t get to actually start over and live an embarrassment-free life.

“So, Blaine,” she starts over breakfast, and her mischievous grin sends Kurt into such a frenzy that he misses her leg the first few times he tries to kick it. “Kurt tells me you have an amazing a-”

“Assorted sheet music collection!” Kurt blurts when he finally does get a hold of her foot.

He hates Rachel for a second but it’s worth the flirty smile Blaine sends his way.

“You think so?” he asks. “I should have you let a closer look someday.”

Sam smirks, Rachel cackles. Kurt chokes on his tea a bit. And Blaine just looks way too pleased with himself.

Kurt changes his mind about potentially thanking Rachel. He seriously needs roommates with better key management skills.

Or simply a new apartment. He hates moving, though.

Maybe he can get a spot in the same building.

7B certainly has its assets.


End file.
